- 5
Ridiculousness aside, though, Brake is reasonably impressive both as a performance piece and as an exercise in staging.
—Noel Murray Onion AV Club
- 4
...a full-scale paranoid nightmare with back-to-back double-whammy endings.
—Stephen Holden New York Times
- 4
Mannion's script goes a bit too far in terms of twists, capping the third-act suspense with a plot U-turn, and then another, that leaves audiences feeling played. Worse, the final development loses credibility in retrospect, reducing the film to the level of an exercise in paranoia, effects and one actor's ability to hold attention for nearly 90 minutes.
—Robert Koehler Variety
- 4
Director Gabe Torres lobs a twist you'll likely see coming, and another you may not - neither satisfying enough to justify an hour and a half of Dorff-in-a-box.
—Sara Stewart New York Post
- 3
Dorff's mannered Bruce Willis affect seems as insincere as the script, which helplessly loses credibility as info accrues and the narrative unpeels.
—Michael Atkinson Village Voice
- 2
Until its pair of ludicrous twist endings, which complicates its message and logistics in ways that make little sense, Gabe Torres's Brake plays like a more simplistic version of Buried tailored specifically to a hawkish right-wing crowd.
—Andrew Schenker Slant Magazine